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But a Spanish judge has now ruled that the remains of two brothers, summarily executed by fascist forces in 1936, should be retrieved from the crypt at the dictator’s Valley of the Fallen burial site.

In a decision revealed publicly on Monday, Judge José Manuel Delgado agreed to a request for the “right to dignified burial” lodged by the granddaughter of Manuel and Antonio Ramiro Lapeña, the first time a court has ordered the opening of the crypt which holds the remains of over 30,000 Spaniards killed during the country’s 1936-39 civil war.

Visitors walk past the tomb of dictator Francisco Franco is seen inside El Valle de los Caidos (The Valley of the Fallen)Credit:
REUTERS/Andrea Comas

While the decision was celebrated as a breakthrough by those campaigning for the recovery of more than 100,000 bodies still missing from the civil war, the Francisco Franco Foundation described the judge’s ruling as “ridiculous” and part of a deliberate campaign to “delegitimise” the dictator’s regime.

“The decision is arbitrary, unjust and very difficult to enact”, the foundation’s vice president, Jaime Alonso, told the Telegraph. Mr Alonso said the relatives of all of those buried at the Valley of the Fallen should be consulted before DNA testing began to identify the Lapeña brothers.

“Imagine a relative went to Dunkirk or any World War Two cemetery and said 'I don’t want my grandfather to be buried here'. This is a cynical utilisation of the past with the aim of dividing Spaniards once again”.

Twenty-five miles northwest of Madrid, the status of the Valley of the Fallen as a symbol of Franco’s triumph looms awkwardly over Spain’s modern democracy. The Catholic complex, comprising a 150-metre-high cross atop an outcrop of rock with a basilica and the crypt below, is run by Benedictine monks.

In 2011 a commission of experts suggested that Franco’s remains be removed and the site be made into a depoliticised memorial. But the conservative government of Spain’s acting prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, ignored the recommendations.

Most of the estimated 33,847 buried at the site were transferred from elsewhere, as was the case with the Lapeña brothers, whose bodies were dug up from a mass grave in Zaragoza province and transferred to the Valley of the Fallen in 1959. The brothers’ granddaughter, Purificación Lapeña, took her case to a civil court after attempts to have the Valley of the Fallen crypt opened up had failed in Spain’s criminal system and on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Paco Ferrandiz, an anthropologist at Spain’s CSIC national science council and an expert on civil war graves, said the decision announced on Monday was “symbolic” as the first time a Spanish court had decided to open such a burial site.

“We don’t know the state of the crypts as the Benedictine monks are the only ones with access and they don’t say anything. This decision opens a little window of hope that we may be able to get a look inside and make a technical appraisal. That would break a barrier.”

January saw the first-ever court-ordered exhumation of a civil war victim in the democratic era when a mass grave was opened in Guadalajara’s public cemetery. The remains of Timoteo Mendieta were disinterred due to a request by an Argentinian judge after relatives had travelled to Buenos Aires in search of justice.